


21 Grams

by Smilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2007, AU, Dealfic, Gen, Post Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-26
Updated: 2010-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-10 07:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's too late, in truth, to regret what he's done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	21 Grams

**Author's Note:**

> Love to Desertport, for making me see possibilities when this story was a simple idea, and when it was finished for going over it again and again to make it presentable. To Dot, for finding good things in this story and for pointing out a few points so I could think over them more. Both are very cool girls.  
> Mistakes are all mine. Originally posted [here](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/87558.html).

_Nihil amatum nisi praecognitum – Knowledge precedes love.  
There is a minor exception to this rule inasmuch as people do fall in love,   
and that falling in love is something disproportionate to its causes,   
conditions, occasions, antecedents.   
For falling in love is a new beginning,  
an exercise of vertical liberty   
in which one's world undergoes a new organization._

\- Lonergan, Insight

 

Crossroad is less than thirty miles from the shack. Twelve minutes via the shortcut Sam's memorized and that Dean doesn't know about. The shortcut is not paved, and if Sam stops caring what it does to the car's tires, or what the bushes will do to its paint job, if Sam stops caring, he knows he can make it in less than eight minutes.

Sam's not only memorized the road, each bend and the rain-holes hidden by leaves, by the shadows of the trees, but he's gone through what he'll need to do twice, a third time to fix each action and the words in his mind. Not more than three times, for he still wants to leave room for improvisation.

He's there at dusk. As soon as he left the shack, Sam stopped thinking about Dean bound to the headboard and drugged -- a cowardly trick, but it worked. He buried deep down the voice screaming betrayal: _You tricked me, you sonofabitch._

He traces a devil's trap on the ground with thick lines of chalk powder, covers them with dirt that dyes his hands a deep red. He wipes them on his jeans but they're still dirty, pinkish, like bloodstains no amount of water can wash out.

Sam hopes it's enough, hopes the crossroad demon won't feel the trap like some sort of psychic push until it's well inside it.

Everything's based on the demon falling for it, again, and he knows his plan is shaky. He should have some sort of back-up, a diversion, but he's discarded each and every possibility in the last year, left every one of them on the side of the road like abandoned trash.

This is all he can think of.

When he's ready, he buries the satchel with one of his fake identities in it. It's one of those Dean did for him when he came back from Stanford. His hair is long and limp in the booth picture, his mouth curved downward – that had not been a good time. The name on it is Dean's idea of a dirty joke and Sam has to smile, despite everything, at Dean's sense of humor.

That he could lose that, that he could lose Dean… it's like having his chest bound tight with barbed wire. It sets his hands on trembling so hard his fingers go lax, he drops the satchel and swears softly, jabs it inside the hole with sharp movements.

_*_

Sam had thought the eviction of a soul would be a surgical process. Imagined the red-eyed bitch would do it with clinical precision, using a fine-edged scalpel to separate it from the body. Imagined Dean deserved -- and maybe Sam did as well – to be treated better than anybody else.

It's a vindictive bitch and, if Sam has to guess, it's never forgiven Dean for trapping it the first time, tricking it out of a deal, stealing back a soul practically from its pocket.

It takes Dean's soul in bits and pieces, clawing it out of his body with ruthless violence.

_*_

Its voice is honeyed, slick. Smooth skin, pearly white. Sexy in a way that's dirty and plain wrong. The black dress showing voluptuous curves and the smile wicked, twisted toward evil. There's viciousness in the smile, in the voice, tilting on a high note, like it's winning.

In the end, Sam has to settle for less. Has to settle for Dean breathing and alive and almost entirely Dean.

It doesn't make him wait and it falls for the trap so easily that Sam feels a stupid need to whoop, but he doesn't. It still holds all the aces, but Sam wants only to be heard. When the deal is made, Sam feels dizzy and scared like he can remember being only once in his life.

It says, "I'm bound by my word," it says. "Are you?"

And Sam considers for a moment if he should send the bitch where it belongs just because he can, but he's sending some part of Dean there, some part of _himself_, and it isn't lost on Sam that the demon gets the last laugh.

Still, he recognizes the need, the want. It's second nature. The words are ready on his lips, with no need to read them after a full year of sending demons back to hell, and he has to chase them back with force, the strain of it producing a sound that never goes past his lips, a low-key vibration between his vocal cords.

He breaks the trap with the tip of his boot.

It – although she feels womanly enough in his arms -- kisses him with a slick tongue that leaves a taste of sulfur so strong Sam feels his stomach rebel, his skin recoil in repulsion.

She says, "You Winchesters… so much fun to play with."

And then she's gone in smoke darker than the shadows the night casts on the trees, leaves behind a confused host.

Sam is only distantly distressed that all the concern he can spare is for a brother he's left tied to a bed back in an abandoned cabin two miles out off the I-75.

 

_*_

Sam hadn't known what to expect. Had gone to the crossroad without many options save for a will to set things right for Dean. For himself. Dean's sacrifice is too big, too heavy to carry, the weight of his imminent absence impossible to contemplate. But his hands had been empty, and the only thing he could offer would be to take away the last thing Dean had left.

His hands had been terribly empty.

_*_

 

Sam's driving like the world's gonna end if he doesn't make the trip back in less in than eight minutes. And probably it will. It will if the demon's lied and Dean's not quietly resting on his bed.

On the road back to the cabin, the Impala hits a pothole and Sam swears loud, a scream bubbling out of his throat that's half fear and half frustration. The pothole must be deep: Sam feels the car lurching out of it and the speed makes it swerve sideways, not completely out of control though Sam gets her back only a few inches shy of a tree trunk. He's irritated and angry and so scared that he can't hardly see clearly, hands still trembling with adrenaline. He hits the wheel twice, climbs out to look at the damage. Two steps and he folds in on himself, breathless.

It passes so soon that for a moment he thinks maybe he's just imagined it. But then it's back, ten times worse, focused around his right shoulder, on the head of the humerus, the flat plate of his scapula. Fingers probing and scratching, a heavy pulling. Pain shoots through his veins, running like liquid fire,. He feels his body seizing, nerve endings frizzling. When it stops he falls back on his ass as if someone's let go of a rope he was holding onto for dear life.

There's a rustling sound in the bushes behind him and the wet soil is seeping through his clothes, chilling his lower back. He looks around but the sound's gone and there's only the silence of a late October night in the woods.

He takes a moment to gather himself; in the next breath he's speeding off, the car leaving behind parallel scars in the dirt.

The demon's not broken its promise.

_*_

The moon comes out from behind the clouds, highlights the trees with a silvery light, and makes them glint against the sky. Dread curls tight and heavy in Sam's stomach at what he's going to find in the room. Time crawls, stops altogether then lurches forward again.

Sam doesn't remember parking the Impala. Doesn't remember opening the door, but he does remember the loud beat of his heart and a sort of all-consuming panic when he lights the candle.

Shredded blankets and pillows, the synthetic white stuffing covering every surface -- like confetti -- and giving the room a fake joyful look And Sam has to stop, just for a moment, before he can go forward: bent in half, hands on his knees and eyes closed tight so he doesn't have to look at the bed farther from the window.

On the floor there are claw marks. And the circle he'd laid around the bed, the graveyard dirt and the snake skin he'd powdered and mixed carefully, secretly so Dean never knew about it, it's blown away. A broken, ineffectual half-circle.

_*_

Fact: Dean's alive and breathing. There. And if it had worked for Dean, if having Sam breathing and alive had been his only defense in the face of Sam's helpless rage, then it has to work for Sam too.

Fact: Dean. A little off. Dean. His brother. Alive. Dean.

_*_

Sam had worked on his plan in silence.

He'd worked on his plan secretly. No traces left behind. No clues to be picked up. He did it once, could do it again.

After, when everything was done and options had been taken out of Dean's hands, Dean says, "You're such a good liar, Sam." He says it viciously, just a hint of sadness hidden in his voice, the way the words curl downward, a different arrangement of his features, visible only because Sam knows which tell-tale signs to look for.

But it's a long night, followed by an even longer day, and Sam lets it pass in silence. He can take Dean's contempt, can take his rage. Whatever Dean can give him, Sam can handle it, because Dean's alive and he is, too.

_*_

Dean smells like fear and sour sweat. Arms and legs contorted in the confines of the binds, wrists scraped raw under the ropes. Sam feels the relief hitting him when he finds the pulse point on his neck beating under his forefinger. When his hands stop trembling he washes the sweat and the blood from the scratches across Dean's legs and chest, the spit from the bites on Dean's ankles and arms. And the only rhythm he can find is the one of his own guilt.

Dean's limp in his arms, arms a dead weight and mouth slack. His head curves against the mute paleness of his shoulder. A stillness that's more than sleep and less than death. The room's still in deep shadow and Sam can only see so well in the dim light. The only thing he can do is clean up Dean's body.

He cuts the ropes and undoes the button of the shirt, unbuckles the belt, pulls off Dean's pants, laying bare for Sam to see in each detail of the damage to his body. He tries not think how much this reminds him of the night they burned Dad's body, how he'd watched Dean wash their dad with the most terrible expression on his face.

With careful movements, he touches Dean's skin, trying to gauge where the broken skin is, how deep the wounds are. On Dean's neck, Sam stills, horrified, immobile but for a harsh exhaled breath and his heart hammering with force against his ribs.

_*_

He's been looking at his watch, the hands counting down seconds and minutes and hours, and Sam can see the time.

It's maddening. Mornings are the worst, he awakens and there a this blissful instant when he forgets. When it comes back, it's as hard as the first time.

There are twenty-one weeks left. He still has time.

In Topeka, the ticking gets so loud that he almost throws off his watch into the tiny wastebasket full of bloody towels in the bathroom. He's feeling frustrated and resentful of Dean, of Dad, in the chill in his bones that never goes away. They are close to Lawrence, and he's resentful of that too.

Dean looks at him from the doorway, drowsy with sleep and painkillers and trying his best to look alert and ready.

"Vision?" he asks, dreading the answer with a furrowed brow. Sam wants to tell him that the only vision he's having is of a world where Dean's no more, and please stop being so fucking cool about it.

"No, Dean. Go back to bed, I'm fine."

Dean shrugs, face relaxing in a look of satisfaction that Sam knows is due to the fact that he's not had a single vision since Dean killed the Yellow-Eyed Demon. Just another voice for Dean to strike off his list. As if Sam were another mission Dean had to complete. As if Sam didn't need him anymore. Everything is going according to the plan for Dean.

"Stop mourning, Sam. I'm not dead yet."

_But I was, Dean. I was. And now you're going to die in my place._

"I'd move heaven and earth for you."

He still has time, if it comes down to that.

_*_

Briefly, Sam considers waiting for the light of morning, doesn't want to look at whatever it is with such a darkness closing in on him. And it's weird, Sam stopped being afraid of darkness and what it conceals many years ago.

The light from the candles doesn't help too much; he'll need a generator soon if they end up staying there more than a few days. He puts three candles on the makeshift nightstand. They allow him to see the deep track that traces Dean's back, high on the left shoulder, bisecting the deltoid and the dorsal, ending abruptly mid-back. The skin is white, like a birthmark, translucent and paler than the rest of Dean's skin. A depression of skin, like an old scar, but whiter.

He remembers the pothole in the woods, touches his own shoulder under the shirt, finds nothing. He takes it off, each tiny button an exercise in coordination. Uses a small mirror to look at his back and there it is. On the right side of it, ending abruptly on its middle: a match to Dean's mark, his own skin raised so he can feel the contour of it under his hands. Black, where Dean's is white. Black. Like sin.

_*_

Day comes grey and cold, fog lingering in smoky tendrils until midday.

Dean sleeps.

In the afternoon the sun emerges, a pale circle, washed out and cold, losing its fight with the clouds that blow in from the east.

Dean sleeps.

Sam straightens the room slowly, without making any noise so he never, even for a moment, loses track of Dean's breath. He lays careful lines of salt on the single windowsill, along the walls. He carves each protective rune he remembers in the wood of the floor, methodically starting from the north corner and going clockwise until that circle too is closed.

Exhaustion catches up with him. He sits by Dean's bed, head close to Dean's left hand so all he has to do is open his eyes to see the vein pulsing in time with Dean's heart.

_*_

The second night, Sam tells Dean stories. Dean's body is contained, curled in on itself. Still, breathing evenly and quietly. The light spilling from the windows shows his face as it should be. Boyish and young and innocent in Sam's eyes.

Sam's voice rises in the dark, mouth forming invisible puffs of breath with each word. He dusts off the memories of his early childhood, of Dean teaching him to drive on a sun-baked back road. He'd screamed at him when he'd tried to start the car without changing gear first. He'd been such a bad teacher, veins bulging in his forehead with frustration. He'd been effective too.

He'd taught Sam to swim. A pond, green water that smelled of sludge and dead leaves brought by the wind. Weren't supposed to be there: Dean had made Sam pick the lock, for practice he'd said, and Sam had felt excited and fearful with the illicitness of it all.

"You didn't teach me, Dean," he says to the empty silence. It'd been fear that had kicked up his instincts to stay afloat. "Or maybe you did?" That was Dad's method: face it until you're not scared anymore.

_*_

On the third day Dean awakens.

It's part of the routine: he reads two lines, looks at Dean. Folds the shirts, stiff from too many washings, looks at Dean. Paces around the single room and every other step, he looks at Dean.

And he's there, standing in the middle of the room, thinking Dean is going to get bed sores if he doesn't wake up soon, thinking he really should try to make him drink some water and Dean's there, eyes open and brimming with light, absorbing all of it.

"What have you done?" Dean asks. No preambles, no nothing. Just four quiet words and a question posed in a way that doesn't need any answer. Sam would have preferred a scream, rage. Would have preferred that Dean were angry, anything but that tone of resignation.

Sam tries to reply, but he's still caught on the unnaturalness of Dean's reaction and his mouth opens without producing words. A fish gaping for air.

Sam's never been able to outright lie to his brother: even when he'd managed it, he'd always left a backdoor open, dropped unconscious hints, sure that Dean, as attuned as he'd always been to Sam, would get the clues. Even when he'd worked on the crossroad plan, as careful as he'd been, he'd feared that Dean would understand and try to stop him before he could even begin.

He can tell that even in the dim light, Dean sees Sam's hesitations,. his inability to form words.

"Goddammit, Sam," Dean says, low and desperate and hopeless. Closes his eyes and Sam can only stay there, waiting for his hands to stop trembling, for his knees to unlock so he can walk.

When Sam looks at Dean again, Dean's sleeping.

_*_

It's too late, in truth, to regret what he's done. Not that he can imagine regret being involved.

But Sam thinks about the consequences. He's always been a planner, never liked to leave options to chance. His entire life, until Jessica died, had been a battle against fate, against predetermination.

And now, he's messed up an equilibrium that is old and should be incontrovertible. They, both of them, are deviations from the natural order of things, and that ought to bring repercussions, Sam's sure of it. Nature is order, it is rules. Instinct that preserves and directs. They'd both tried to cheat it, had discarded those rules as "not applicable to the Winchesters."

In truth it was Dad who started it. Dean had followed his example, never one to do any less. And Sam, despite his protestations, had not fallen far from that tree.

They'd done it for love. Maybe that's enough. Maybe it's not enough for it to count.

Sam's never doubted Dad's motivations for bringing Dean back, nor Dean's for bringing Sam back. Love brims from each particle of Dean in a way that's always blinded and shamed Sam. Hard to live with it, harder to live up to it.

When he goes to the crossroad, he makes sure he goes with the same spirit as Dad, with half the spirit as Dean. He leaves the guilt behind and abandons revenge. So when he goes, he too is pure and blinding with love.

_*_

"What do I have to do?"

"You don't want to bargain your soul for your big brother?" She asks like she expects him to do it, like she'd accept if he offered.

"No." It's hard denying it, because he'd thought of that too, a last ditch solution. Letting it go makes him feel naked and defenseless.

"Oh, that's such a surprise. Guess Dean's right, after all: he's not worth your soul."

"You wouldn't understand --"

"You're right. Think Dean would, sweetheart? I'll be sure to ask him when I can spend some quality time with him." Her laugh grates against his skin, like being cocooned in sandpaper. "You have nothing, nothing I could possibly want. Deal's not off, Sammy. Enjoy the time Dean has left."

"Wait! Wait, you know who I am, you know who I was supposed to be. That has to mean something to you." He's so scared she'll leave that he's ready to use what knowledge he gathered that night in Cold Oaks from the Yellow Eyed Demon. For as much as he wants to forget that, repress it in a corner so he never has to think about it anymore, it's still a card he has to play.

"I have your brother's soul, Sammy; believe me I'm going to hang onto that like a dog to his bone. So to speak. This is the lay of the land: your soul or Dean's I won't accept anything less. Now let me go, before I forget Dean has three weeks left."

"What... what if you could have both?"

"Don't try to fool me, boy. " Low and dangerous and meaning it, even cornered and trapped, but Sam has her attention now.

"I'm not." And the sincerity in his voice is not an act. "I want Dean to live." Easy, want like he's never known before, all his being projected toward it. He wants Dean to live, and to shoot up the volume of rock music until the roof of the car trembles with it. He wants Dean to be intractable in the morning. He wants him to have a family, a woman. He wants Dean to be some child's father, cause he cannot imagine anybody else doing a better job with it.

And he wants to see it too, whether it happens or not. Maybe he wishes something like that for himself, if there's room for it.

"I'm not trying to fool you, I'm offering myself and my brother. You just have to let us live." And it's unraveling now, kind of silly how simple it is. It's always been on the periphery of his vision, vanished whenever he'd tried to look at it full on. Evasive, like those spiteful sprites that hid your glasses and your keys, a single sock. They'd make you mad, but no sense trying to look at them, they're just passing shadows in the corner of your eye.

He can see hope flashing like a too-bright red sign; can see the demon considering his offer, under the mocking look.

He holds his breath.

_*_

He tries to visualize it, imagine his soul, Dean's, each split in two, part of it snatched and brought to hell or whatever the demon has decided to do with it. But maybe he's approaching the matter from the wrong angle. Maybe she didn't: maybe she's chosen what parts to take, and that scares him the most.

The soul equals life. It is consciousness of the things that are, a matrix that enlightens each experience, puts it in order, gives it a meaning. It animates life. Men have a soul, a shard of the absolute and immutable, of the divine. The quality that puts them on a higher plane, so they are different from animals, plants and non-organic objects.

Pastor Jim's sermons must have stuck with him.

What does it make them to have lost part of it? Are they half-undead? Half-living? Lesser beings? Maybe a new race of creatures, a new race of monsters.

He looks at Dean, standing by the window, moon glinting pale off his skin, his head canted to the left, like he's trying to listen to some elusive sound in the distance.

Sam doesn't feel different; the mark on his back doesn't itch or hurt. Dean's not talking, but Sam has no reason to think he's feeling a difference too.

He wants to think Dean's just angry.

He wants to think nothing's changed.

He can, and he will, put every broken piece back together.

Sam wonders if he can rebuild a soul from scratch.

\--


End file.
